The History of Missions (9): A.D. 1500–1600

1492. This date is familiar to every one of us, even including our children. This was the year that Christopher Columbus touched on the island of San Salvador in the Bahamas, and gave these islands mistakenly the name they have held ever since, the West Indies. In 1494 he is said to have landed in Jamaica. In 1497 Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached the west coast of India at Calicut. The age of exploration had come and new lands were being discovered on the far ends of the...